Jorolat:
“Natural Selection is an explanation a la geocentric theory and you can’t test it. I am suggesting that there is a mechanism rather than a process.” -Jorolat
Not occording to the OED online, which says:
“natural selection: the operation of natural causes by which those individuals of a species that are best adapted to the environment tend to be preserved and to transmit their characters, while those less adapted die out, so that in the course of generations the degree of adaptation to the environment tends progressively to increase.”
Note the phrase “operation of natural causes”, which, unless I am mistaken, can be replaced with “process of natural causes” without significantly changing the meaning.
Nor according to Stephen Jay Gould, who, in “Ever Since Darwin” states:
1- “Natural Selection is defined by Spencer’s phrase “survival of the fittest””
2- “The principle of natural selection depends upon the validity fo an analogy with artificial selection. We must be able, like the pigeon fancier, to identify the fittest beforehand, not only by their subsequent survival. But nature is not an animal breeder; no preordained purpose regulates the history of life. In nature, any traits possessed by survivors must be counted as “more evolved”; in artificial selection, “superior” traits are defined before breeding even begins. Later evolutionists…recognised the failure of Darwin’s analogy and redefined “fitness” as mere survival. But they did not realize they had undermined the logical structure of Darwin’s central postulate. Nature provides no independent criterion of fitness; thus, natural selection is tautological.”
3- “My defense of Darwin is neither startling, novel, nor profound. I merely assert that Darwin was justified in analogizing natural selection with animal breeding. In artificial selection, a breeder’s desire represents a “change of environment” for a population. In this new environment, certain traits are superior a priori; (they survive and spread by our breeder’s choice, but this is a <result> of their fitness, not a definition of it). In nature, Darwinian evolution is also a response to changing environments. Now, the key point: certain morphological, physiological, and behavioral traits should be superior a priori as designs for living in new environments. These traits confer fitness by an engineer’s criterion of a good design, not by the empirical fact of their survival and spread.”
4- “Thus, it is not true…that any traits possessed by survivors must be designated as fitter. “Survival of the fittest” is not a tautology. It is also not the only imaginable or reasonable reading of the evolutionary record. It is testable. It had rivals that failed under the weight of contrary evidence and changing attitudes about the nature of life. It has rivals that may succeed, at least in limiting its scope”
Thus, we can see that ‘natural selection’ is not an “explaination a la geocentric theory” of evolution, but rather the process by which Darwinian evolution is actually carried out. Perhaps my choice of the word “method” was poor, but I thought it was clear.
Furthermore, we can see at least one reason why the kaleidascope analogy fails: it describes only the numeric proportions of the alleles in question (i.e. whether or not they survived and spread) without explaining the reason behind the failure or sucess of each allele.
DaveW:
I think the “weak” form says something more like ‘once the entire body plan is put together no really large changes can occur, and the process by which the body plan forms is guided by natural selection’. This would seem to be consistent with many of the ideas Gould expressed in “Wonderful life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History”.